South Africa's genocide case against Israel

 

South Africa’s genocide case against Israel is imperfect but persuasive. It may win

Kenneth Roth

 

The Guardian: 1/13/24

Sat 13 Jan 2024 11.35 EST

Last modified on Sat 13 Jan 2024 13.01 ESTWatching lawyers for South Africa and Israel debate whether Israel is committing genocide in Gaza was like observing two versions of reality that barely intersect.

Each set of counsel, appearing before the international court of justice at The Hague, largely avoided the most powerful evidence contradicting their case, and the absence of a factual hearing or any questioning left it unclear how the judges will resolve the dispute. Yet I would wager that South Africa’s case was strong enough that the court will impose some provisional measures on Israel in the hope of mitigating the enormous civilian harm caused by Israel’s approach to fighting Hamas.

Genocide, as defined in a widely ratified treaty, has essentially two elements. First, an offender must commit certain acts against a targeted group such as “killing” or “deliberately inflicting … conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or part”. Second, these acts must be committed with genocidal intent, meaning an “intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such”. Both parts of the crime were deeply contested by the lawyers in The Hague.

The South African legal team described the horrible conditions in Gaza under Israeli bombardment, including more than 23,000 dead, 1% of the population, with an estimated 70% women and children. Another 7,000 may be buried in the rubble. Some 85% of the population – 1.9 million people – have been displaced. About 65,000 residential units have been destroyed or rendered uninhabitable, and another 290,000 have been damaged, leaving half a million people with no home to return to. At a time of enormous medical need, two thirds of Gaza’s hospitals have been closed.

Israel’s response has been part spin, part serious. Its repeated invocation of Hamas’s horrible 7 October attack and alleged genocidal aspirations are irrelevant because atrocities by one side do not justify genocide by another. Its argument of self-defense is beside the point because a legitimate defense does not allow genocide.

But Israel’s lawyers also pursued more weighty arguments, blaming Hamas’s practice of embedding itself within the civilian population for the damage. Hamas does display a callous indifference to civilian life, but often so does Israel. Even when an enemy is using human shields, an attacker must refrain from firing if the anticipated civilian harm will be disproportionate to the expected military advantage. Israeli forces have regularly violated this ruIsrael’s lawyers noted that Hamas built tunnels under and fired from civilian structures but never addressed a point made repeatedly by South Africa – that in response Israel dropped enormous 2,000lb bombs in heavily populated areas despite their predictably devastating consequences. Nor did Israel address reports that nearly half of its bombs dropped on Gaza have been non-precision “dumb” bombs, which have contributed to what President Biden called “indiscriminate bombing” – also a war crime.

Israel’s lawyers blamed Hamas for using hospitals for military purposes, but never provided definitive proof backing US and Israeli intelligence claims that a “command center” was kept under Gaza’s main al-Shifa hospital or explained why the handful of rifles and single tunnel actually found there justified shutting down this essential healthcare institution at a moment of profound need.

The argument over genocidal intent also had a similar split-screen quality. South Africa cited well-known statements by senior officials: The reference by the defense minister, Yoav Gallant,’ to fighting “human animals”, not, as he now claims, talking about only Hamas, but in discussing the siege, which affects everyone in Gaza; President Isaac Herzog’s statement that “this rhetoric about civilians not aware, not involved” is false because civilians “could have risen up” against Hamas, despite it being a brutal military dictatorship; and the twice invocation by the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, of Amalek, of a biblical injunction to slay every “man and woman, infant and suckling”.

The Israeli lawyers argued that these were “random” statements, not formal government orders, but they were made by Israel’s most senior officials. South Africa’s lawyers also showed a chilling video of a large group of Israeli soldiers invoking Amalek as they danced and sang that there are “no uninvolved civilians”. That suggests a genocidal message was getting through.

The South African lawyers also showed soldiers rejoicing at the destruction of a village as huge plumes of smoke rose from it – hardly the care for civilian lives that Israel’s lawyers described. And it didn’t help that the Israeli foreign ministry accused South Africa, which is defending Palestinian civilians, of “functioning as the legal arm of Hamas”, as if civilians were Hamas.

Arguing against genocidal intent, the Israeli lawyers repeatedly highlighted the warnings given to civilians to evacuate. South Africa’s lawyers noted that Israeli forces continued to bomb in the supposedly “safe” areas where civilians were sent, but the Israeli forces blamed Hamas for fighting from there. They didn’t answer the South African claim, as verified by the New York Times, that Israeli forces had dropped 2,000lb bombs some 200 times in those areas.

There was a similar disjunction of views about humanitarian conditions. The Israeli lawyers highlighted Israeli efforts to provide humanitarian aid, but other than blaming Hamas for sometimes stealing aid, they didn’t grapple with the substantial bureaucratic and military obstacles that Israel has erected to delivery of aid, resulting in far too little getting through. Today, about 80% of people in Gaza are at “high risk” of starvation and death.

How to square the circle? Israel, understandably, thinks of genocide in terms of the Holocaust, but the “final solution” is not the only version. Genocide can be a means, not only an end. When the ICJ issued provisional measures against Myanmar, the most analogous case, the Myanmar army did not aim to kill every Rohingya but only enough – numbers comparable to the toll in Gaza – to send 730,000 fleeing to Bangladesh.

Although on the eve of the court hearings Netanyahu disavowed a desire to drive Palestinian civilians from Gaza, his senior ministers have been openly advocating “voluntary” emigration. One way to understand the devastation and deprivation in Gaza is as an effort to seize the opportunity provided by Hamas to erase some 2 million Palestinians from the demographic balance sheet within the “one-state reality” that, because of settlement expansion, Israel and Palestine have become.

Israel’s lawyers noted that it would be unfair for the ICJ to order Israel to stop fighting in Gaza, as South Africa seems to be asking, while Hamas, which is not a party to the state-to-state proceedings, would be under no such order. The lawyers also objected to being ordered to “desist” from committing acts of genocide because that would suggest prejudgment of the ultimate merits of the case. To secure provisional measures at this early stage of the proceedings, South Africa needs show only that it is probable that genocide is under way.

Again, the court could split the difference by ordering Israel to refrain from certain seemingly genocidal actions, such as using enormous bombs in populated areas, limiting humanitarian aid and obstructing hospitals. That still leaves Hamas’s conduct unaddressed, but the body that could speak to Hamas is the international criminal court (ICC), whose prosecutor the Israeli government has banned from Gaza because it could prosecute Israeli officials as well.

The ICJ has no capacity to mandate compliance other than by act of the UN security council, which the US government could veto. But the Israeli government, having accepted the court’s legitimacy by arguing the case, will be hard pressed to ignore an adverse ruling. Moreover, a finding of probable genocide would be deeply stigmatizing for a country that was created as a refuge from genocide, adding considerable pressure on Netanyahu to stop, and making it far more difficult for Biden to continue his unconditional provision of arms and military aid. That could make an enormous difference in saving Palestinian civilian lives.

• Kenneth Roth, former executive director of Human Rights Watch (1993-2022), is a visiting professor at Princeton’s School for Public and International Affairs

   

  Below: South African advocate Adila Hassim's presentation of the preliminary case for genocidal conduct in Gaza. The equally important charge of genocidal intent was covered separately by a different advocate, and is also well worth watching, along with Israel's response to both. There has been inadequate coverage of this week's historic ICJ  hearings in US media, and the Biden administration has dismissed the whole matter as "meritless, counterproductive and without factual basis," without even one word of refutation or denial of the charges, which, as the following video shows, are based in the most current assessment of the facts as accepted by the UN as of last week. The goal here is not to prove that genocide is occurring, but rather to show that there is sufficient prima facie evidence to warrant a full investigation (which could last years) and result in legal instructions that Israel desist from acts that may lead to possible genocide. This is one 20 minute segment of a 4 hr. presentation at the Hague last week, but a very important one laying out the genocidal nature of Israel's conduct in Gaza since Oct. 8. The full hearings of 1/11 (S Africa) and 1/12 (Israel) are posted on youtube for those with the time and interest. All of it is important.

  Despite Israel's involvement in the case, PM Netanyahu has already stated that the World Court hearings are "a moral low point in the history of nations," and that "“No one will stop us, not The Hague, not the axis of evil and not anyone else," in a televised address.
  

  
   

Why are American taxpayers still forced by law to subsidize anti-democratic religion?

Context

Tax breaks for religion are not written into the US Constitution. Those tax breaks, valued at ~$100 billion/year (a conservative estimate was $82.5 billion for 2013), are a privilege. Religion in America, especially politically active American radical right Christian nationalist churches and businesses have abused the privilege and profoundly insulted the American people with deeply divisive, slanderous attacks on secularism, civil liberties and honest, unspun history.  

There have been periodic attacks on the tax break scam for a long time, but those church lobbyists and their money have been ~100% successful in not just keeping tax breaks intact. They have been expanding access to tax dollars via decisions from America’s Christofascist USSC. President Ulysses S. Grant, in his 1875 State of the Union address, commented on church tax breaks:

“correcting an evil that, if permitted to continue, will probably lead to great trouble in our land. [churches received] all the protection and benefits of Government without bearing [their] proportion of the burdens and expenses of the same.”

So, what is the cost-benefit of America’s extravagant generosity to religion? That is hard to pin down, in large part because churches and religious groups and businesses like to operate in as much secrecy as they can get away with. They can and do legally get away with a hell of a lot in secret. The law protects and nurtures rogue theocratic organizations.

This article by Christianity Today goes into some of the history of what I see an a religious tax scam industry in America. 

Heartbreaking brutality from organized

American religious criminal syndicates

Earlier this week, NPR broadcast a long segment (~45 minutes?) about people who were sexually abused and raped by various church leaders, including some high level people (Bishops and whatnot). The NPR broadcast heavily quoted the video below about American church sex abuse and rape. Al Jazeera produced the video.

Some religions, like the Mormon religion, protect pedophiles, They publicly deny it (and brazenly lie about it) or keep silent when questioned. NPR Illinois commented:

A reckoning is taking place in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and Jehovah’s Witnesses as stories emerge of child sex abuse. 

Years ago, outrage erupted over how the Catholic Church allowed such abuse to go unchecked, but fewer may be aware of how other faiths are covering up abuse in their ranks.

We also highlight the latest reporting from Al Jazeera’s Fault Lines documentary, “Secrets of the Clergy”:

We reached out to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for a statement for this program, but did not hear back. 

We also contacted the United States Branch of Jehovah’s Witnesses. Below is the statement we received in full. [the statement is an outrageous pack of lies]

Among the galling insults that religions like Mormonism practice is actively protecting elite church pedophiles and successfully blocking or watering down laws that would require report reporting of criminal sexual assault and rape to law enforcement. The churches want to deal with the problem by hiding, downplaying and denying there is any problem at all. These church leaders have the viciousness in themselves to blame the sex attack victims, not the perverted usually adult male rapists and molesters.

This video and the NPR broadcast left me outraged and bitter about how corrupt and ineffective our two-party political system has become. Maybe it always was that way. This is a moral outrage, pure and simple. The laws I have to live by supports these hideous, lying criminal syndicates that shield themselves by calling their operations a religion and shielding their criminality as an internal matter of religious freedom.  

Qs: Should tax breaks for all religions be eliminated or just those that protect rapists and other kinds of perverts? What about Christian nationalist churches who are active in politics and routinely skirt the law (the Johnson Amendment,[1] now widely ignored) that demands loss of tax break status for politically active churches and groups? Should America be a theocracy with Christian Sharia law controlling and run by a bigoted, White male Christian Taliban, or should the US remain a secular nation with the secular Constitution we now have?

Footnote: 
1. Wikipedia on the Johnson Amendment: 

The Johnson Amendment is a provision in the U.S. tax code, since 1954, that prohibits all 501(c)(3) non-profit organizations from endorsing or opposing political candidates. Section 501(c)(3) organizations are the most common type of nonprofit organization in the United States, ranging from charitable foundations to universities and churches. The amendment is named for then-Senator Lyndon B. Johnson of Texas, who introduced it in a preliminary draft of the law in July 1954.

In the early 21st century, some politicians, including former President Donald Trump, have sought to repeal the provision, arguing that it restricts the free speech rights of churches and other religious groups. These efforts have been criticized because churches have fewer reporting requirements than other non-profit organizations, and because it would effectively make political contributions tax-deductible. On May 4, 2017, Trump signed an executive order "to defend the freedom of religion and speech" for the purpose of easing the Johnson Amendment's restrictions.

News bits 'n nits: A bit about plastic; A bit about making babies; Etc.

NPR reports about public attitude toward disposable plastic items:

These poll results come as environmental experts project disastrous levels of plastic that are already permeating the water you drink, the food you eat and the air you breathe. By 2050, the amount of plastic waste produced worldwide is expected to quadruple, according to a 2017 analysis. “The Plastic Problem”, an hour-long PBS NewsHour special report that premieres Nov. 27 at 10 p.m. ET, examines how the plastic we use is creating problems for our entire planet.

“Those items will be with us for centuries,” said Jacqueline Savitz, chief policy officer in North America for Oceana, a nonprofit ocean conservation organization, in an email to the PBS NewsHour.  

More than a third of Americans — 34 percent — oppose a total ban on single-use plastics, such as non-reusable forks and drinking straws, while a quarter of U.S. adults said they support such a measure, according to a PBS NewsHour and Marist poll.

That’s sort of a mixed bag. People need to be willing to give up some convenience for the sake of the environment. For example, about 0% of plastic cutlery and about 0% of plastic coffee pods are recycled. Almost 100% of those items go into the environment in some form or another.

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Here’s a bit of good news from a research paper about the repeal of abortion rights by American radical right Christofascists:

Prevalence of childfree adults before and 

after Dobbs v Jackson in Michigan (USA)

Although there are many reasons one may choose not to have children, recent restrictions on reproductive health care may also contribute to this decision. For example, the United States Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson eliminated a long-standing constitutional protection for abortion access, which reduced patients’ medical autonomy and increased the risks of pregnancy and childbirth, and therefore may have led adults to decide not to have children. In this study, we use representative data on Michigan adults immediately before and after the Dobbs decision to examine changes in the prevalence of childfree adults in this population. We find that 21% of Michigan adults were childfree before the Dobbs decision, but this number rose to nearly 26% after the decision. Controlling for demographic characteristics, a Michigan adult was 32.8% more likely to be childfree after the Dobbs decision than before. We conclude that when access to safe reproductive health care is uncertain or unavailable, adults that do not already have children may decide that they do not want children.

If this is a nationwide thing, it ought to help decrease American overpopulation. If so, that would be a good thing, but for the wrong reason. Hm. One can wonder if this will prompt a spasm of emotion over the Great White Replacement Theory if it gets picked up and distorted into some blood curdling horror by America’s radical right propaganda Leviathan, e.g., Faux News, et al. Hard to tell.  

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From the Trolling the Christians Files: Rapper Lil Nas (Little Nasty?) releases a new single today called J CHRIST. The song is dedicated to “THE MAN WHO HAD THE GREATEST COMEBACK OF ALL TIME!” 

A Lil nas publicity photo promoting the new song is sure to get some blood pressure up.

Lil nas being a little nasty

I like the cute wings

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Some Trump stuff

The Nitter net reports about an unsulting, lies- and slander-laden DJT verbal screed in the courtroom in New York City, from yesterday I think:

Qs: Why the hell do judges not toss DJT's sorry, treasonous, insulting, lying ass in jail for inciting another insurrection, and openly insulting the courts, the legal system and the American people?  What’s a Nitter net?

Newsweek reports about payments to DJT from foreign governments in violation of the emoluments clause of the US Constitution: 

Speaking at a Fox News town hall on Wednesday night, the former president defended himself from accusations made in a recent report from Democrats on the House Oversight Committee which accused him of accepting payments from foreign governments from countries such as China, Saudi Arabia and Qatar while in office.

The report accused Trump of violating the U.S. Constitution's foreign emoluments clause, which prohibits federal officials from accepting money or gifts from foreign governments without permission from Congress, after overseas officials stayed in his real estate company's hotels and apartments during his time in the White House.  

Eric Trump, executive vice president of The Trump Organization, dismissed the report's finding as a "joke" and said that all the company's profits from its business with foreign governments were voluntarily donated to the United States Treasury.

Apparently it is lost on vice president Eric the Corrupt and Clueless that the emoluments clause does not care what a president does with money from a foreign government. All it says is a simple Don’t take the money, stupid! The open contempt and disregard the Trump family has for the rule of law could not be clearer. The Trump family sure has a lot of morally rotted grifters, traitors, crooks and liars in it. Eric himself is a sick, insulting joke.

Q: Has Barron Trump been unleashed on the world yet, or is he still incubating at some ivy league school while he hones his ethics skills?  🤪  (Hey! Who stole my lunch money!)

TDS flares up in an online DJT screed

In more solid evidence that DJT is truly a dictator in his ambition, he now publicly and directly (i) demands that Joe Biden stop all the prosecutions of himself, and (ii) threatens Biden. DJT undeniably sees himself above the law. He sees the president as having the power to prosecute or not prosecute crimes including treason. That is how DJT’s former attorney general Bill Barr acted, which is why he is now disgraced among most normal pro-democracy people, but beloved by authoritarian radical right elites.

Mediaite reports about DJT’s latest middle of the night flare up of TDS (Trump Derangement Syndrome):

Trump Rants For SIX Solid Minutes About Criminal 

Immunity Appeal In Falsehood-Riddled Late-Night Attack

“Because of Joe Biden. I spend a lot of time in courts. Federal. State, city. And tomorrow, I’ll be attending another Biden inspired federal appeals court argument on presidential immunity in Washington, D.C..

Of course, I was entitled as president of the United States and commander in chief to immunity. I’m entitled to immunity. Every president has immunity, especially one that did the job I did. I did a great job, and I wasn’t working for myself. I was working for the country, I wasn’t campaigning. The election was long over. I wasn’t campaigning.

I was looking for voter fraud, something that I have to do under my mandate. I have to look for voter fraud. And I was finding it, tremendous amounts of voter fraud in the 2020 election. We have volumes of information. That’s all there.

And I was doing my job, which I had to do. And it’s my obligation to do an otherwise. Running our country and running it well, we didn’t have Russia going into Ukraine. We didn’t have Israel under attack. We didn’t have China talking every day about going into Taiwan. We didn’t have inflation. We had a great economy. If I don’t get immunity, then Crooked Joe Biden doesn’t get immunity. And. All of the things he’s done to allow the border invasion. Millions and millions of people coming into our country, many from prisons, jails. Mental institutions, insane asylums, many terrorists coming into our country. That’s really allowing insurrection.

And come into a situation where he allowed the surrender to Afghanistan. We surrendered. The United States of America surrendered to Afghanistan, where we gave them $85 billion worth of free. The best military equipment anywhere in the world left thousands of hostages behind. And they were American hostages behind. Still there, many of them. And 13 dead soldiers and many soldiers so badly hurt. This is gross incompetence. We did a surrender in Afghanistan. Nothing’s ever been so embarrassing in the history of our country.

Also, the millions and millions of dollars that went into Joe Biden’s pockets with money from foreign countries like Russia, Afghanistan, China, many others. I mean, Joe would be ripe for indictment. So you’re saying that Trump shouldn’t get immunity, but Joe Biden would? I didn’t do anything like he did. I ran a great country. This guy’s gotten $3.5 million from the mayor of Moscow’s wife. What’s that all about?

And that’s the least of it. One of the reasons he’s so soft on China is because he received a lot of money from China, and he’s afraid to do anything about it or say anything because he knows he’s afraid to say, we have a manchurian candidate in Joe Biden. We have to get him out.

By weaponizing the DOJ against his political opponent. Me, Joe Biden has opened a giant Pandora’s box. As president. I was protecting our country and doing a great job of doing so. And the historians will be saying that they already are. But just look around at the complete mess that Crooked Joe Biden has caused.

He’s the worst president in the history of our country by far. He’s also the most corrupt president. The least I’m entitled to is presidential immunity, just like any other president would get. I’d be the only one that they would even consider not giving me immunity, because for whatever reason, people are angry that I’ve done such a good job and I’ve replaced people that were corrupt that was supposed to be president. So take on the fake Biden indictments. They’re all Biden indictments. These aren’t indictments, as we say, like God coming down from heaven and saying you did something wrong. These were indictments given and pushed by Joe Biden. And he told his DOJ to do it. Don’t believe anything else. He told his DOJ to do it. Go and indict him because he’s losing badly in the polls so badly that he figures this is the only way that he can win.

The only problem is that thus far, it’s pushed us way up in the polls, higher than anybody’s ever been, actually, because people see it’s a scam and they see it’s a persecution and they don’t like it when it comes to anything, but certainly not when it comes to a president. They’re running a political campaign in a dirty way, even worse than they did previously. And frankly, it’s never happened in our country before. It only happens in third world countries or banana republics. They using their department of injustice to go after his a political appointment. And this is all him, 100% him. He’s the one that told him to do it and they obey his orders. It’s a shame never happened in the United States before, but it’s happened now.

And he has to be careful because that could happen to him also. The next president, whoever that may be, has a statute of limitations that go back six years. That’s a long time, Joe. You have to be very careful. We have to guard and protect our country. We have to do what’s right for our country.

You don’t indict your political opponent because he opposes the corrupt election, which you know was corrupt. Everybody knows it was corrupt. The American public knows it was corrupt. You don’t indict your political opponent. Thank you very much.”

Sadly and frighteningly, there still are millions of adult Americans who cannot see much of an anti-democratic, kleptocratic authoritarian threat from a former president who openly committed treason in his 1/6 coup attempt and his blatant morally rotted criminality while in office and thereafter. Tens of millions of American voters actually support this lying, kleptocratic wannabe dictator.

News bits: A bit of gun violence research; Authoritarian radical right propaganda tactics; Etc.

Researchers published gun violence data for 1991-2016. They found that gun safety laws correlated with decreased gun violence.

The Era of Progress on Gun Mortality: State Gun 

Regulations and Gun Deaths from 1991 to 2016

Background:

The recent rise of gun violence may lead to the perception that the problem of gun mortality in the United States is intractable. This article provides evidence to counter this perception by bringing attention to the period spanning from 1991 to 2016 when most US states implemented more restrictive gun laws. Over this period, the United States experienced a decline in household gun ownership, and gun-related deaths fell sharply.

Methods:

The main analysis examines the conditional association between the change in gun regulations at the state level and the change in gun mortality from 1991 to 2016. We include a range of robustness checks and two instrumental variable analyses to allow for stronger causal inferences.

Results:

We find strong, consistent evidence supporting the hypothesis that restrictive state gun policies reduce overall gun deaths, homicides committed with a gun, and suicides committed with a gun. Each additional restrictive gun regulation a given state passed from 1991 to 2016 was associated with −0.21 (95% confidence interval = −0.33, −0.08) gun deaths per 100,000 residents. Further, we find that specific policies, such as background checks and waiting periods for gun purchases, were associated with lower overall gun death rates, gun homicide rates, and gun suicide rates.

Conclusion:

State regulations passed from 1991 to 2016 were associated with substantial reductions in gun mortality. We estimate that restrictive state gun policies passed in 40 states from 1991 to 2016 averted 4297 gun deaths in 2016 alone, or roughly 11% of the total gun deaths that year.

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The NYT reports: 

One of Trump’s Oldest Tactics in Business and Politics: 

I’m Rubber. You’re Glue. 

Whenever Donald Trump is accused of something, he responds by accusing his opponent of that exact thing. The idea is less to argue that Mr. Trump is clean than to suggest that everyone else is dirty.

Former President Donald J. Trump is appearing twice in court this week — on Tuesday in Washington and Thursday in New York. He was not required to attend either hearing. But advisers say he believes the court appearances dramatize what is fast becoming a central theme of his campaign: that President Biden — who is describing the likely Republican nominee as a peril to the country — is the true threat to American democracy. 

Mr. Trump’s claim is the most outlandish and baseless version of a tactic he has used throughout his life in business and politics. Whenever he is accused of something — no matter what that something is — he responds by accusing his opponent of that exact thing. The idea is less to argue that Mr. Trump is clean than to suggest that everyone else is dirty.

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GOP slanders:

“Joe Biden knew exactly what he was doing, he knew exactly how his family was receiving tens of millions of dollars from our enemies around the world.” — Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), interview on Fox Business Network with Maria Bartiromo, Dec. 22

“I mean, you have more than $20 million that has been moved to the Biden family through many of their shell companies and in LLCs that they set up. We know that a lot of that money came from foreign adversaries, including China and Russia and Kazakhstan and places like that.” — House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), interview on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” Jan. 7

“Based on the evidence I’ve seen so far, I think the number is going to be north of $50 million that we’re talking about here. This will go down as one of the most politically corrupt presidents and families in U.S. history.” — Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.), interview on Fox Business Network, Aug. 22

Too bad there won't be any blowback or legal repercussions for the slanders that authoritarian GOP elites routinely poison American politics with. Those lying slanderers belong behind bars. Instead, they are treated by America’s radical right as pillars of the community fighting for truth and democracy. 

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Compassionate conservatism in action: 

Moving beyond efforts to block expansion of health care for the poor and disabled, Republican governors in 15 states are now rejecting a new, federally funded summer program to give food assistance to hungry children.

The program is expected to serve 21 million youngsters starting around June, providing $2.5 billion in relief across the country.

The governors have given varying reasons for refusing to take part, from the price tag to the fact that the final details of the plan have yet to be worked out. Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds (R) said she saw no need to add money to a program that helps food-insecure youths “when childhood obesity has become an epidemic.” Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen (R) said bluntly, “I don’t believe in welfare.”

News chunk & bits: Plastic in bottled water!; Huh, a coup attempt was illegal??; New evidence against DJT?

The boffins in the chemistry department at Columbia University invented a new way of detecting tiny particles in water. The counting method is called Stimulated Raman Scattering (SRS) microscopy. They looked at popular brands of water in plastic bottles. They write in a recent PNAS paper:

Significance
Micro-nano plastics originating from the prevalent usage of plastics have raised increasingly alarming concerns worldwide. However, there remains a fundamental knowledge gap in nanoplastics because of the lack of effective analytical techniques. This study developed a powerful optical imaging technique for rapid analysis of nanoplastics with unprecedented sensitivity and specificity. As a demonstration, micro-nano plastics in bottled water are analyzed with multidimensional profiling of individual plastic particles. Quantification suggests more than 105 particles (100,000) in each liter of bottled water, the majority of which are nanoplastics. This study holds the promise to bridge the knowledge gap on plastic pollution at the nano level.

Abstract

Plastics are now omnipresent in our daily lives. The existence of microplastics (1 µm to 5 mm in length) and possibly even nanoplastics (<1 μm) has recently raised health concerns. In particular, nanoplastics are believed to be more toxic since their smaller size renders them much more amenable, compared to microplastics, to enter the human body. However, detecting nanoplastics imposes tremendous analytical challenges on both the nano-level sensitivity and the plastic-identifying specificity, leading to a knowledge gap in this mysterious nanoworld surrounding us. To address these challenges, we developed a hyperspectral stimulated Raman scattering (SRS) imaging platform with an automated plastic identification algorithm that allows micro-nano plastic analysis at the single-particle level with high chemical specificity and throughput. .... With the established technique, we studied the micro-nano plastics from bottled water as a model system. We successfully detected and identified nanoplastics from major plastic types. Micro-nano plastics concentrations were estimated to be about 2.4 ± 1.3 × 105 particles per liter of bottled water, about 90% of which are nanoplastics. This is orders of magnitude more than the microplastic abundance reported previously in bottled water. 

Smithsonian Magazine commented:

As much as experts are convinced that puny plastics are all around us, few methods to date have been able to directly detect them. Scientists suspect that the hardest to see are the most damaging of the lot: plastic fragments 100 nanometers in size or less, less than 1/100th the width of human hair. Now, a new study, published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, reports a plastics detection technique that can quickly identify the size and composition of miniscule particulates. The authors found that an average of 240,000 particles populate a liter of bottled water, a number greater than previously reported. The find illuminates the true presence of micro- and nanoplastics littering our homes and lives.

“This is really a breakthrough,” says Sherri Mason, director of sustainability at the Pennsylvania State University at Erie, the Behrend College, who wasn’t involved in the research. “If we can’t detect the particles, then we can’t study them. That’s why this study is so important.”

Hm . . . . . YIKES!! 240,000 plastic bits/L?? (1 L = 1.057 qt)

Some commentary from the learned peanut gallery commentated:

1. As I understand it, fetuses are being found with microplastics. I'd go so far to say the majority of the people of the world are full of microplastics.*
    2. Life in plastic it’s fantastic!
    3. I am become Barbie
    4. Destroyer of worlds.
    5. This Barbenheimer thing is getting out of hand

6. They found a whole plastic bag on the bottom of the Mariana Trench. That's ~11,000 meters under the sea surface.

    7. People are putting plastic in their Mariana trench all the time for fun.

8. Plastic degrades over thousands of years... and our life expectancy has increased as we got more plastic within us... that would mean that... if we were made 100% of plastic, we'd last thousands of years!

* Microplastic particles are found on both sides of the human placenta (both maternal and fetal) for the first time, in a study led by Antonio Ragusa of the San Giovanni Calibita Fatebenefratelli Hospital. In this study, six placentas were studied and found to contain a variety of plastics commonly used in man-made coatings, paints, adhesives, plasters, finger paints, polymers, cosmetics, and personal care products of various colors. (the research paper is here)

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DJT’s latest defense in the Georgia state election interference lawsuit is that no one told him it was illegal to overturn an election! Mediaite reports:

Trump Demands Election Crimes Case Be Dropped In New Filing

Because Nobody Told Him Overturning Election Was Crime

Former President Donald Trump demanded the election crimes case against him be dismissed on the grounds that he didn’t have advance notice he would be committing a crime by trying to overturn the election. .... Trump’s attorney argued Trump “lacked fair notice” that his conduct could be considered criminal:

DJT’s I didn’t know it 

was illegal defense

This helps explain why DJT needs to pull out all the stops and all the corks from all the bungs in his own defense: 

Maximum jail terms under Georgia state law

That defense ranks right up there with the dog ate my homework defense. 

Cecil ate $4,000 in bills that were 

laying around on the counter 

Bad dog, bad, bad dog!

OK, OK, DJT’s defense isn't quite as good as the dog ate my homework defense. Sheesh.

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Although this news bit is posited as a big deal, it doesn’t look big to me. Maybe I’m missing something. Salon reports:

Experts: Jack Smith’s “dramatic new proof” so “overwhelming” 

reluctant witnesses may decide to flip

Professor: Trump “demonstrated a criminal intent” to collaborate with insurrectionists at “expense of the Constitution”

Former President Donald Trump refused to help stop the violent attack on the U.S. Capitol and instead watched TV from the White House, according to previously undisclosed details that special counsel Jack Smith's team uncovered as part of its Jan. 6 probe, ABC News reported.

A significant portion of the information in the report comes from interviews with Dan Scavino, Trump's former deputy chief of staff and current senior adviser to his reelection campaign. Scavino, who refused to cooperate with the House select committee's probe on Jan. 6, citing executive privilege, had his claims rejected by a judge last year and was informed he had to comply with a grand jury subpoena. Essential parts of his testimony were disclosed to ABC News.  

“Trump was ‘very angry’ that day – not angry at what his supporters were doing to a pillar of American democracy, but steaming that the election was allegedly stolen from him and his supporters, who were ‘angry on his behalf,’” ABC News reported. “Scavino described it all as ‘very unsettling,’” sources told the outlet.  

“Indeed, Trump’s angry response to Scavino’s comment to him that there’s smoke coming out of the Capitol in effect was, ‘Let it Burn,’” [former prosecutor] professor Bennett Gershman said. “And his nonchalant indifference to Vice President Pence’s safety and welfare offers chilling proof that Trump’s conscious purpose, namely, his intent, was first to incite an insurrection and then by his inaction to demonstrate his intent that the insurrection effectively stop Congress from doing its constitutional duty to certify the election results.”

This proof would be “powerful circumstantial” evidence of Trump’s criminal intent underlying all the federal charges, he added.

Aw, poor Scavino, he was all unsettled on 1/6 because his boss was trying to overthrow the government and pull off a coup. Poor, poor boy. Sad. /s

Actually, I wish Scavino would be put in the slammer for a decade or so to give him time to think about why he supported DJT in the first place and why he refused to cooperate with prosecutors. Citing executive privilege was pure cynical bullshit by Scavino and he knew it all along.

This news isn’t new. We all knew that DJT was watching the coup attempt on TV and refused to do anything about it. That makes perfect sense because he wanted the coup attempt to succeed, not fail because he intervened to stop it. Maybe what makes this important is that there is now testimony under oath about DKT’s morally rotted, autocratic state of mind on 1/6.